open source systems for libraries

catalog and roads -- search engines for you and me

Both the Ecila (French) search engine codebase, catalog-1.0, and the U.K. eLib endproduct ROADS v2+ are open source and increasingly used tools for building web-based catalogs a la Yahoo. Some eLib folks have explicitly turned to open source as a way to keep formerly well-funded projects going (see the press release describing this decision). Open source as "exit strategy" isn't terrifically sustainable, but a step in the right direction nonetheless.